Together with the transition to Core microarchitecture in the desktop segment, Intel introduced the same microarchitecture for the mobile computers. Now Core 2 Duo processors are also available in notebooks. However, are they really that much better than the good old Core Duo CPUs? Let’s find out now!

3D Games

So, the notebooks equipped with the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics card, like ASUS F3Ja solutions we are testing today, can be quite suitable for gaming. Therefore, we couldn’t omit any real gaming tests today.

It didn’t matter what CPU the notebook had: both platforms demonstrated pretty acceptable FPS rate in relatively contemporary 3D games. Although I have to admit that the newer Core 2 Duo processors ensure slightly better results. The platforms built with Core 2 Duo T5600 CPU outperformed its counterpart with Core Duo T2400 processor by 12% in Quake 4 and by 4% in Half Life 2. The results are certainly somewhat diverse, so the actual performance of the platforms with different processors in various games will depend on the parameters of the gaming engine. However, you shouldn’t forget that CPUs with Core microarchitecture have a few great advantages very useful in contemporary games: they work more efficiently with the memory bus and perform FP and SSE operations faster.